“Hello, Mr. Nedbal. Hello, Mrs. Nedbal,” I said. “What are you doing?”
The Nedbals didn’t smile. They didn’t say anything. They threw their bags into the back of the truck and glared at me as they returned to the house. I cautiously followed them in. I could hear my mother in the kitchen, but I went upstairs and pretended to go to the bathroom to see what the Nedbals were doing. Both of their doors were open and I could see inside their apartment for the very first time. Their living room was very messy, and I was startled by Otik, the Nedbals’ son, who was helping them move out. I was very frightened of Otik. He was in his mid-twenties and had a glass eye that always seemed to glare at me, no matter where I stood. He picked up a chair and headed toward me, so I dashed into the bathroom and waited for him to go away.
“Are you really leaving?” I asked Mrs. Nedbal, once Otik had disappeared downstairs.
“That’s right,” she replied bitterly. “We’re out on the street. Who knows or cares what will happen to us? Certainly not your father. He won his case. That’s all that matters to him.”
She picked up a cardboard box and carried it briskly from the room.
I hovered around the bathroom and watched until Otik eventually announced that they were ready to leave, and when I poked my head around the bathroom door, the apartment was empty. I slipped into the Nedbals’ bedroom and stood on my toes to look out of their window. They had a much better view of the valley than we did. Their two rooms were slightly smaller than ours, but I thought they were actually much nicer, even though they were very dirty. There were cockroaches in the kitchen cupboards, and the walls were brown with grease. I picked my way through the trash on the floor and found a brand-new oven mitt in the corner of the kitchen. I examined the mitt and slipped it on my arm. It was bright green and came all the way up to my elbow. Suddenly, I heard the sound of the truck again in the street, and I ran to the window and watched the Nedbals drive away. They were sitting on their couch in the back of the flatbed and they didn’t look very happy. I waved good-bye with the mitt, but they didn’t wave back.
I decided to take the mitt downstairs and ask my mother if I could keep it. It was like a big green puppet, and if I moved my thumb and fingers, I could make the mitt talk.
“Hello!” I said to the mitt.
“Ahoj!” the mitt said in a funny, high-pitched voice.
I ran out of the Nedbals’ apartment and was trotting down the stairs, when I stopped in amazement on the first floor. The big door opposite my parents’ bedroom was open, and I could hear the sound of someone moving around inside. It was as though our house was slowly coming to life. I tiptoed nearer and listened. The heavy shuffling definitely didn’t belong to any members of my family, and my heart leaped to my throat as I realized that my grandmother must have come back for her furniture. I summoned up all my courage and peeked around the door.
My grandmother’s room was lavishly furnished. There were three large, elaborately framed paintings on the walls and plush red carpet on the floor. Most of the furniture had been covered with sheets, but I could tell that everything was expensive and nice. It was as though I had discovered a secret room in a castle.
At the far end of the room, an old, plump woman was removing some dusty books from an even dustier bookcase and packing them into a cardboard box. Her gray hair was rolled up in a bun, and she was humming quietly as she worked. She was the spitting image of the grandmother from Ms. Nemcova’s book. After a while, she turned and saw me in the doorway.
“You must be Dominika,” she said gently.
The old woman had blue eyes and a melodic voice, and I ran into the room and threw my arms around her knees.
“Are you my grandmother?” I asked her.
The old woman looked down at me with astonishment.
“No,” she said. “I’m your Auntie Mary. But I know your grandmother very well.”
“Do you?” I asked. “What is she like? Is she nice?”
“Of course she’s nice,” the old lady smiled. She bent down to rummage in one of the boxes, and pulled out a leather-bound album.
“Here,” she said. “This is your grandmother Kveta in front of the National Museum.”
The photograph was a black-and-white image of a lady wearing a fur coat and a hat. She looked very dignified and important, but her face was quite fat and she had a double chin. Her mouth was set in an imperious smile, but she didn’t look very happy, even though she was well-dressed and standing on the steps of a beautiful building.
“That’s my grandmother?” I said incredulously.
Auntie Mary must have heard the disappointment in my voice, because she closed the photo album and put it back in the box. There was a little antique table next to the bookcase, and on top of the table was a pink Duralex glass. Auntie Mary picked up the glass and showed it to me.
“This is a very special glass,” she said. “It will never break, even if you drop it on the floor. Would you like to have it?”
“Yes, please,” I nodded enthusiastically.
She gave me the glass, then she took my hand and led me downstairs. She knocked on the kitchen door and my mother opened it. There was a long, embarrassed pause.
“Good afternoon, Auntie,” my mother said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No, no,” the old woman replied, and I noticed that her voice was trembling. “I just came down to tell you that it would be better if you could keep your little girl out of our room until I finish packing. I have a lot of work to do, and I’d really like to finish before it gets dark.”
“Of course,” my mother said.
Auntie Mary nodded, and went back upstairs to my grandmother’s room. My mother watched her leave, and a look of longing appeared on her face.
“Look what I’ve got!” I tried to cheer her up. “I have a big green glove and a special glass that will never break!”
“Where did you get the glass?” my mother asked.
“Auntie Mary gave it to me!” I said. “Is she really my auntie?”
My mother sighed heavily. She sat down on a chair and pulled me into her lap.
“No, she’s not your real aunt,” she told me. “Auntie Mary isn’t anyone’s aunt. She’s my mother’s servant. She spent her whole life working for my parents, but because people aren’t supposed to have servants in communism, we had to call her Auntie Mary in public.”
“She’s nice,” I said. “She’s just like The Grandmother!”
“Yes, she is.” My mother’s eyes welled with tears. “Auntie Mary took care of us when we were little and looked after us when we were sick. She was more of a mother than my mother ever was, and I really loved her—” she choked back a sob and her chin began to tremble.
It was terrible to see my mother cry. I threw my arms around her neck and patted her hair with Mrs. Nedbal’s mitt.
“Don’t cry, Mummy!” I pleaded.
“I’m all right, little one.” My mother wiped her eyes and smiled weakly. “Don’t worry.”
She took the mitt and inspected it. “Did Auntie Mary give you this as well?” she asked.
“No, I found it in the Nedbals’ kitchen,” I said. “It was lying on the floor but it’s very clean and green! Mrs. Nedbal says that they have to go and live in the street because nobody cares for them. Do they really have to live in the street?”
My mother laughed and shook her head.
“Of course not,” she said. “We gave them and Mr. Kozel some money and helped them find a new apartment. Don’t you worry about Mrs. Nedbal. She likes to try to make people feel sorry for her, but when other people are having a hard time, she always seems rather happy.”
“Is that why she smiles all the time?” I asked.
“Maybe it is,” my mother said wistfully.
“What are you doing?” I asked, looking around the kitchen. “Are you cooking something?”
“Yes, I am,” my mother smiled. “We’re having some people over to help us celebrate getting th
e house back, so I’m baking a cake and making some strudel. Would you like to help?”
“Okay!” I said. “Can I sit up on the bench?”
My parents threw a party to celebrate their victory, and the house filled with people laughing and talking at normal volume. My mother was dressed in a fashionable outfit my dad had bought her as a present, and she looked very pretty. My father was in high spirits, and I could hear his booming laugh. There were at least ten people in the living room, but the only person I really knew was Tomas Glatz, my father’s best friend. Mr. Glatz was a Jewish intellectual who came from Slovakia and spoke many languages. He and my father had met when my dad was working for the government and, after the Soviet invasion, he and his wife, Helena, had stayed friends with my parents in spite of their expulsion from the party. Whenever my father needed to make a phone call without the Nedbals listening on the other line, he would drive to Prague and visit the Glatzes. They were a lovely couple and I liked them very much. According to my mother, they had been inspired by her decision to have me, and Helena had recently given birth to their own baby daughter, Monika.
My dad was a good host and made sure that everyone was enjoying themselves, but the real star of the party was the glamorous Mr. Poloraich, an elegant man who had once been a famous spy in America. Mr. Poloraich had striking features and tufts of hair sticking out of his ears and nose, which gave him the look of a puppet stuffed with straw. He had also known my father in the old days and, after the invasion, he would often turn up with a bottle of scotch and spend the evening in the kitchen talking politics with my dad. He was a very good storyteller, and I couldn’t help noticing that in spite of his hairy nose and ears, a lot of ladies seemed to congregate around him. He stood in the middle of the room with a cigar in one hand and a glass of scotch in the other, and regaled the crowd with amusing stories from the West. Midway through one of them, he was interrupted by a series of loud exclamations in the hallway, and we turned to see a well-dressed lady rushing into the room.
The lady must have been in her sixties, but she wore a tight-fitting purple suit with a plunging neckline that accentuated her enormous cleavage. She was short and energetic, and the first thing I noticed was the bright orange lipstick she was wearing. She also wore a thick bracelet with lots of clanking charms, and I watched with fascination as she rattled across the room and threw her arms around my dad, stamping his face with her orange lips.
“Jarda! My boy!” she exclaimed, in what I would later learn was a North Moravian “short beak” accent. “I am so very please for you! You have win this most difficult court case and now the house has been return to your family!”
She stepped to the side and smiled radiantly.
“And I don’t believe you have meet my fiancé, Mr. Doskar?”
A balding man with a deeply wrinkled face appeared behind her and blushed as he shook my father’s hand. “How do you do?” he nodded bashfully, and I noticed that his teeth were yellow and brown.
“Klara! Come here my darling!” the woman shrieked, abandoning the men and rushing over to my sister. Before my sister could protest, the woman grabbed her head and pushed her face between her breasts. “How much I have miss you!”
Her enormous bosom heaved with emotion while my sister struggled to catch her breath, and then the woman’s eyes widened as she saw me hiding in the corner. She pushed Klara briskly to the side, then came over and swept me up off the floor. She plastered my face with orange kisses.
“Aren’t you a pretty little girl!” she told me. “Almost as pretty as I, when I am your age.” She put me back on the ground, nodded in my mother’s direction, and went to say hello to Mr. Poloraich.
“Who was that?” I asked my mother.
“That’s your grandmother,” my mother said. “Her name is Hilda.”
“My grandmother? I thought her name was Kveta!”
“Kveta is my mother,” she told me. “Hilda is your father’s mother. She’s your other grandmother.”
“I have another grandmother?” I shook my head in amazement.
“I’m afraid so,” my mother sighed.
“But why didn’t anyone tell me about her?” I asked. “I want a grandmother! I want someone to tell me stories.”
“I don’t think Hilda has time to tell you stories, Trumpet,” my mother said. “She’s very busy and doesn’t even have much time for your father these days. This is the third time we have seen her since you were born. She doesn’t come to visit very often.”
“Why not?” I asked.
“I think she’s having too much fun,” my mother replied.
MY FATHER’S FAMILY came from Ostrava, one of the ugliest and poorest cities in Czechoslovakia. My grandmother had been so poor when she was young, her biggest dream was to have curtains in the windows. She had been a great beauty, but had quickly married a man she didn’t love, to get away from her brutal, drunken father. The man’s name was Emil, and he was a quiet fellow who worked as an accountant in the State Iron Works. He and Hilda had two sons, and after thirty years of proletarian life in Ostrava, he died and my grandmother moved to Prague and reinvented herself as a Socialist businesswoman. She ran a popular buffet at the Florenc bus station, and made a lot of money selling little cakes and sausages and watered-down booze. She was very popular in the transport community, dating many bus and train drivers in the years following my grandfather’s death. But my dad had a hard time dealing with all her boyfriends and fiancés.
Strong and capable as he was, my dad had a turbulent relationship with his mother, perhaps due to the fact that they were so similar. Hilda was also a wheeler-dealer, and she was used to getting her own way by any means necessary. I watched as she circulated through the party with old Mr. Doskar trotting behind her. Before long, she had disappeared upstairs and was making a thorough inventory of the house. My father shadowed her nervously and I followed at a distance, trying to imagine this loud and flamboyant woman reading me bedtime stories. Her hair was jet black and curly in the Bohemian style, and it was obvious that she had been very pretty as a girl, but with her colorful suit and accent, she looked and sounded a bit like a parrot. I could hear her chattering excitedly as she tramped through what had been the Nedbals’ apartment, and at which point my father intercepted her and took her to the kitchen for a chat, leaving Mr. Doskar in the living room, helping himself to sandwiches. My mother and sister were standing nearby, watching my father lead Hilda downstairs.
“She doesn’t want to live with us, does she?” my sister whispered.
“I have no idea what she wants. I didn’t even know she was coming,” my mother whispered back.
“And I can’t believe she brought that man with her.”
“Neither can I,” my mother agreed.
“His name is Mr. Doskar!” I exclaimed. “He’s very old and his hands keep shaking all the time.”
Mr. Poloraich, who had regained control of the party, made a suave joke that saved Mr. Doskar from embarrassment, and my mother smiled gratefully as she whisked me from the room.
“Why don’t you go outside and see if Barry would like to eat the leftover chicken?” she said. “There’s a plate in the fridge. Get your father to help you.”
“Okay.” I was always happy to go and see Barry.
I went down to the kitchen and looked at the fridge. The handle was too high for me to reach, but I was actually more interested in listening to my dad and my grandmother talking in Mr. Kozel’s old apartment. My father was trying to keep his voice down, but my grandmother’s voice became louder and louder, and after a few moments the apartment door crashed open, and she stormed up the stairs with my dad right behind her.
“How dare you!” my grandmother was shrieking. “Where the sun doesn’t shine, the doctor comes knocking! I catch my death of cold in this apartment! To even suggest that I live in such condition! You should be ashame of yourself, Jarda! Ashame!”
“But Mum,” my father growled as he followed her upstairs. “W
e have to reconstruct the house. We’re months away—”
“I hear enough!” Hilda roared as she waved at her fiancé. “Come, Mr. Doskar! We leave!”
She strode to the front door and made a huge show of putting her boots on. Poor old Mr. Doskar looked up from the couch, where he had been happily nursing a glass of Mr. Poloraich’s scotch, and seemed very confused. He handed the glass to my mother and mumbled his thanks, then he hurried over to the door to help my grandmother into her coat. His hands were shaking very badly, and it took them a long time to leave, but when they did, Hilda made sure that she slammed the door behind them. The mood of the party was definitely ruined, and my dad was quiet and sad for the rest of the day.
“You know, I’m not really sure that I would like Granny Hilda to be my grandmother,” I confided to my mum as we were doing the dishes. “I would rather have a grandmother like from the book. I would much rather have a grandmother like Auntie Mary.”
“One of the first things you learn in life is that you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your relatives,” my mother informed me gently. “Once you’ve got them, they stay with you forever.”
“But that’s not fair,” I complained. “When you’re writing your books, I have no one to play with. Dad’s busy all the time, and you’re both too busy to read me stories.”
“That’s true,” she agreed. “We have to work very hard now to try and fix the house before winter, but maybe we can find you a nice baby-sitter who could read to you during the daytime. Would you like that?”
The Twelve Little Cakes Page 5